Welcoming Sky Sprawl to Johnson County, IA

Years ago I spoke to a friend of mine who was concerned about urban growth and outward sprawl. He said, "I'd much rather watch building get taller than for them to continue to spread out further and further into the county." And that made sense to me--the more you can build upward, the less you'd have to spread outwardly. However, as I fast-forward to today, I failed to see a fatal flaw in our agreement. What if we ended building both up and out? When you use that context, you now see every city and suburb that was ever built.

   Currently in Johnson County, Iowa, we are in the midst of a housing/building boom. Places that used to be farm fields are now new large single-family housing subdivisions. In the urban core, buildings that used to be two or three stories tall are now at least 4 stories and most new developments in the 10+ story category. We are beginning to see sky sprawl near the campus where I work as smaller buildings are beginning to look out of place in the shadows of the behemoths that stand above them. Naturally some of the growth is welcome, but as other amenities are being built simultaneously, the "charm" of the city is taking a hit as barricades and orange cones are cutting off streets and sidewalks.
 
   Progress, as it were, is impeding traffic. But, the visionaries tell us, a small price for a future of gleaming cities and high-rise dwellings for the well-heeled urbanites who will assuredly move in and make our city more prosperous and increase the tax base so the city government can make ends meet (and the rest of us can enjoy the new amenities, even if the ones we are near fall into decay). But we are also building canyons which will make it windier and hotter and potentially dangerous to traverse. I experienced a version of this first-hand while walking by a construction site on a particularly blustery day and watching parts of the construction blow off the building.

   Our brains years ago forgot that builders build any way that they are allowed to build. Up, down, or out, it really doesn't matter that much. As we imagine our city growing, we have a hard time imagining it morphing into something we hardly recognize because each of us comes to it at a different point in time. This means that what I see as my "ideal" town is different from what a person seeing it for the first time today may experience it. Hence we keep growing until we have reached capacity and that may be aesthetic capacity, or real estate capacity--which are generally not the same measure.

   So, we will continually welcome sky sprawl, as we did urban sprawl. We see it as part of democracy. As human beings, we like to believe that we watch out for nature and give it its due. As it turns out, nature has no friends and must fend for itself. As I watched the piece of the building sail off into the middle of the street, I wondered if it was a warning shot or just poor construction.

(photo credit: Alan Light)